No tights were harmed in the making of this show and, thanks to a signed petition,
neither was Clark Kent. In Smallville, the untold truths behind Superman are more than you’d expect!
One thing audiences quickly noticed about "Smallville" is despite being the story
of a young Superman, you never see Clark wearing his iconic red-and-blue tights,
and we only rarely see him fly. This was no accident. It's the result of a decision
made by the showrunners to tell a more grounded story about the Man of Steel.
Back when "Smallville" was still being pitched to the studio,
its creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar had a motto for what the show would not be about:
"no tights" and "no flights." Clark Kent would never wear the Superman
suit or fly throughout the run of the show. Gough told The Washington Times:
"It is difficult to really connect with someone wearing their underpants over their tights."
In the same chat, Millar described the iconic red cape as "cheesy." These two mandates set
by Gough and Millar stayed in effect to varying degrees after they left the show.
While Clark eventually starts flying, he just runs incredibly fast. And he doesn't put on the
red-and-blue Superman costume until the end of the series finale when Clark runs to the top of
the Daily Planet building to change into his suit before rescuing a plane that's about to crash.
On its face, the grounded, realistic approach that "Smallville" takes to
telling a superhero story without any costumes or overt displays of superpowers seems better
suited to a character like Batman. This is no coincidence, since the original intention was
to make a series about a young Bruce Wayne's journey to becoming Batman.
In 1999, the "Batman" franchise was under the weather after the wildly negative reaction to
"Batman & Robin." That was when scriptwriter Tim McCanlies pitched the idea of a television
series focusing on a young Bruce Wayne in the years before he becomes the Dark Knight.
The studio responded positively to the idea, and a script was created for the pilot of the series.
The episode sees Alfred Pennyworth narrating the events of the main plot involving Bruce
investigating his father's company for possible ties to the Gotham underworld.
But then Warner Bros. started putting plans together to create a new,
more serious film about the Caped Crusader based on the classic "Batman:
Year One" comic series. Since Warner Bros. didn't want the movie to compete with the show,
the base concept for the latter was retooled into an origin story for Superman instead.
"There are times when I think you don't know me at all."
The biggest wild card with regards to the success of "Smallville" was the casting of
Clark Kent. Superman is one of the most instantly recognizable pop culture icons around the globe,
and the series needed to find someone who would be able to
embody the legend and still carve out his own identity as teenage Superman.
After a lot of auditions, the creators of "Smallville" zeroed in on then-unknown actor Tom
Welling. While Welling had some big shoes to fill when it came to playing such an iconic character,
the actor decided to strike out his own path. He told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
"I actually made the choice when preparing for this role not to
do research on anything else that has been done with this character.
To really just take it from a fresh standpoint and create its own image."
In another interview with TeenMag, Welling admitted that he did not
read a lot of Superman comics growing up. For these reasons Welling entered into the
role of Clark Kent without a lot of the cultural baggage associated with Superman
and his fandom and was able to create a fresh take for a new generation of fans.
"Smallville" almost didn't feature Tom Welling as Clark Kent, since he actually turned down the
role when he was initially asked to read for it. He told The Hollywood Reporter:
"This show 'Smallville' came along, and they weren't releasing the script. They
just wanted me to audition. My manager at the time says,
'That either means they don't have a script, or it's not very good.' We turned it down."
While the actor was unwilling to audition without a script, the showrunners thought
he had the potential to play a really compelling Clark Kent. Finally, Welling was allowed to read
the script after signing a nondisclosure agreement. That's when the actor realized
that the show was not about a superhero "running around in tights," but a high school kid trying to
discover himself. That's what convinced Welling to take on the role despite his initial misgivings.
"I wasn't even wearing red and blue."
What made "Smallville" particularly exciting for DC fans was that the show made liberal
use of characters from the comics outside of Superman's personal mythology. Over the course
of the show, Green Arrow, Zatanna, Impulse, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter,
and various other superheroes swing into the fray. Batman and Wonder Woman were out of bounds,
though, as there were plans for their own movies and TV shows.
Oliver Queen proved a big hit with fans. After a disappointing effort to launch
Justin Hartley as his era's Arthur Curry with an infamous failed pilot for an "Aquaman" series,
the minds behind "Smallville" brought Hartley into the universe as the Green Arrow. Rich,
handsome, charming, and highly skilled at hand-to-hand combat,
Oliver more-or-less takes the place of Batman on "Smallville."
Green Arrow was such a breakout character that there were talks of him getting his
own show. Speaking on Michael Rosenbaum's "Inside of You" podcast, Hartley said:
"They wanted to do a spinoff called Metropolis or something like that,
I heard whispers of that. It was Lois and Oliver in Metropolis and whatever that was."
"Smallville" might have its critics among the DC fandom, but it's hard to argue against the series'
iteration of Lex Luthor. Michael Rosenbaum played a very different version of the quintessential
supervillain than the one typically seen in the comics. This Lex grows up with Clark in Smallville
and considers the Last Son of Krypton his brother from another mother until discovering his secret.
Witty, calculating, and effortlessly charismatic,
Rosenbaum's Lex is one of the best depictions of the character in any live-action film or series.
And it seems the actor did a little bit of method acting by embodying his
character when the cameras weren't rolling. Rosenbaum told the "Smallville Yearbook":
"I went into the auditions and just took over. I felt really confident,
because I had nothing to lose."
Rosenbaum recalled passing a message to the producers of the show asking what exactly they
wanted the actor for Lex to bring to the table. Based on the studio notes, Rosenbaum circled out
the parts of the audition script where he would be alternately funny, brooding, and menacing.
After the producers asked Rosenbaum to come back for another screen test, he unleashed
Lex's classic arrogance and told the studio that he would not audition again because
the first time went so spectacularly. The gambit worked, and Rosenbaum was soon hired.
"I promise I'm not a criminal mastermind."
Years before Supergirl got her own show in the Arrowverse, she was a big part of "Smallville."
Played by actress Laura Vandervoort, this version of Supergirl was Clark
Kent's Kryptonian cousin named Kara Zor-El and appears regularly throughout Season 7.
At first Kara is depicted as an antagonistic force due to her alien nature. But eventually
she is influenced by her cousin's human values and becomes a hero at his side.
As is an all-too-common issue for female characters in the action-fantasy genre,
the decision makers behind "Smallville" put Vandervoort in outfits some might
describe as needlessly skimpy. For her part, Vandervoort detested wearing the
costumes picked out for Kara. At a New York Comic Con panel, Vandervoort said:
"I did ask them to burn the wardrobe when I
was done with the show. I would've personally liked to have done it."
When "Smallville" came onto the scene, the most famous depiction of Superman
was without question that of the late Christopher Reeve. Therefore,
it was inevitable that Tom Welling and "Smallville" by extension would be held
up to the standard set by Reeve's "Superman" films. Fortunately, fans saw Reeve give his
blessings to the show when he appeared on it in a brief supporting role as Virgil Swann.
Not only did Reeve give his seal of approval to "Smallville," but he was impressed enough
with Welling's portrayal of Clark to express a wish to see the actor play Superman in a
movie. Speaking on Michael Rosenbaum's "Inside of You" podcast, Welling said:
"I remember in the end he says to me, 'I'm really glad they chose you to be
the next Superman.' I was like, 'Well, they didn't.' That's when Brandon Routh
had gotten the role in 'Superman Returns.' And he said, 'Well they should have.'"
"Bad vibrations?"
"Smallville" has a lot of important characters, but at the end of the day,
the most important character in the entire show was Tom Welling's Clark
Kent. From the first episode to the series finale, Welling holds
the narrative of the entire show together and is present in almost every major scene.
This meant that the actor was under a huge amount of pressure while making the show. Welling worked
long hours on the series and was left exhausted by the end of each shooting day. The cast of
"Smallville" was so worried about Welling's health that they rallied together to sign a
petition demanding that the studio assign him a driver so he wouldn't have to drive himself home
after work every day. Speaking on his "Inside of You" podcast, Michael Rosenbaum told Tom Welling:
"All of us are driving to a location at 4:30 a.m. with one eye open and
you're in every scene. I think it got to a point where we all like signed a
letter for you because we're like 'You're going to kill Superman.'"
Welling also recalled the incident and revealed that the rest of the cast waived their rights to
have a personal driver provided by the studio just so Welling could get one.
While "Smallville" is rightly praised for its acting and providing a grounded story
for the Man of Steel, the show was also a trendsetter when it came to special effects
on TV. Until the late '90s, good special effects were considered the domain of big
budget action movies, while TV special effects were generally considered cheap and cheesy.
In order to make "Smallville" work, its creators had to pull off something much
more complicated than simply using lots of CGI. Each of Clark Kent's superpowers
needed to be shown in different ways, and the production had to figure out
the logistics of it all. Tom Welling told The Hollywood Reporter how he ran
on a treadmill on the back of a Ford pickup truck to simulate super speed as an example.
These lessons and techniques provided an early blueprint for how the Arrowverse
would tackle similar issues when it came to superpowers on a television budget.
Ironically, while "Smallville" ran for 10 seasons, it still feels like it only
scratched the surface of the stories it could tell. Fans clamored to find out what happened
to the characters of the show after the series finale, and the answer came in
the form of a spinoff comic series that acts as an 11th season of "Smallville." In the comics,
Clark has spent more than half a year as Superman while still keeping in touch with
his friends from Kansas. Perhaps the biggest advantage the comic series has over the show
is that it allows Batman and Wonder Woman to finally become part of the "Smallville" canon.
The saga of Tom Welling's Clark Kent doesn't end there, though. In 2019,
Welling reprised his role as Clark Kent for The CW's mega-crossover event "Crisis
on Infinite Earths," which also saw Erica Durance's Lois Lane return.
The actor also announced that he is working together with Michael Rosenbaum to launch a
"Smallville" animated series for a new generation of fans. The plan is to get as many of the
original cast members as possible to come back to voice their characters for this new show.